Current video programming sometimes provides a “crawl” across the bottom of a video screen. A crawl may provide information in textual format such as news, weather, traffic information, sports scores, etc. The information thus displayed is chosen by a video programmer, and cannot be controlled by a user or viewer of video. In fact, video users generally have no way to prevent a crawl from being displayed, or of selecting times when a crawl will be displayed, despite the fact that a crawl may obscure or distract from video content that the viewer wishes to see. Further, even if the viewer does wish to see information unrelated to video programming displayed in a portion of a video screen, present systems and methods do not provide viewers with any way of selecting or customizing the information to be displayed. Thus, viewers presently are forced to view information in which they may have no interest, such as sports scores, weather, traffic, or news related to another city or geographic area.